The Sword of Knowledge

A re-read for me; I’ve owned the individual paperbacks for many years - I purchased them new when they were first published. This is an omnibus of the 3 novels: A Dirge for Sabis, Wizard Spawn, and Reap the Whirlwind. The 3 are a fantasy which is rooted in real-world history with the serial numbers filed off, and deal with the theme of knowledge: acquisition, dissemination and retention versus destruction, greed and intolerance. There are also themes of unintended consequences, practicality, and vision.

The first novel, A Dirge for Sabis, is effectively the Fall of Rome. A group of artisans, natural philosophers are allied with a mercenary captain trying to save Sabis from the invading Ancar by developing cannon. To do this, they need show more a patron, who is only interested in their other invention, a steamship (the practical application of Hero of Alexandria’s aeolipile). However, they run out of time and the city falls. Escaping behind enemy lines, they settle in a distant privince and found a hidden school.

The second novel, Wizard Spawn, is set around a millenium after the fall of Sabis. The Sabirn people live as an underclass in the petty kingdoms that replaced the Sabirn Empire, and are held to be in alliance with demonic powers. The ruling Ancar have their own gods and folkways, and the Sabirns are being blamed for atrocious weather. A disgraced nobleman lives with the common people, acting as a doctor. He befriends some Sabirns, and runs into intolerance and predjudice as a result, and escapes the start of religious persecution with them. Only at the end of the book do we discover that the Sabirns he befriends are representatives of the hidden school, and the school founders have passed into the realm of legend.

The third book, Reap the Whirlwind, is set some 500 hundred years further on. The action here is focussed on the school itself. Set on the border of civilised territory, the school is facing an existential threat - the invasion of a tribe of horse nomads. Here the story revolves on how the school faces this threat: attack, retreat or ally? It turns out the tribe is fleeing a far bigger tribal alliance…

I’ve always liked these books and long thought it a pity that only the 3 were ever published. Magic here is very low-key, being basically probability manipulation for good or ill. The hidden school trope is well handled, as is the theme of knowledge - how it is gained, lost or (ab-)used. For example, the steamship from the first book is developed and falls into the hands of a pirate kingdom. However, by the second book, that knowledge is lost. The antibiotic salve from the second book is lost by the third book, although there are notes on how to produce it, they don’t specify the detailed steps to do so, nor do they detail the exact ingredients (a bit like recreating the recipes from De Re Culinaria).

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Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/0743498755/0743498755.htm